Taking the day off? Pete Davidson was noticeably missing from Saturday Night Live after the comedian criticized his fellow cast members.
Daniel Craig hosted the Saturday, March 7 episode, which featured musical guest The Weeknd and included cameo appearances by Elizabeth Warren and Rachel Dratch. However, Davidson, 26, did not appear in any live sketches or pre-taped sketches and was not seen during the cast’s sign off at the end of the show.
One week earlier, the Dirt actor made controversial comments that he felt out of place on the NBC variety show, which he joined in 2014 at the age of 20.
“It’s a hard thing to do ‘cause you don’t want to ever pull the trigger too early. But everybody’s always been like, ‘You’ll know when you know and it’ll be all right,’” Davidson told Charlamagne Tha God in an interview on February 24. “I personally think I should be done with that show because they make fun of me on it. … I don’t know whose team they’re playing for, really — if I’m the joke or I’m in on the joke.”
He continued, “They think I’m f–king dumb. Like, I’m literally painted out to be like this big dumb idiot. Like, even all my sketches are just me being like, ‘OK, sure.’ … I think everybody outgrows it and I think for what I could do on the show — which is just barely anything and it’s just ‘Weekend Update’ and I feel like I’ve done, like, 30 of those and I just feel like, yeah, I’ve done as much as I can over there but happy to be there as long as [creator] Lorne [Michaels] likes me.”
The New York native added that he considers series creator Lorne Michaels “a father figure” who “has treated me with nothing but love.”
Days later, Us Weekly confirmed that Davidson skipped the Saturday Night Live cast party after the February 29 episode.
“A lot of the cast members who were there noted that Pete’s absence at the party was due, in fact, to his comments last week and the tension with him and other cast members,” the insider said.
Although Davidson hasn’t been present for Saturday Night Live events, he showed up for a rare red carpet appearance for his movie Big Time Adolescence in New York City on Thursday, March 5. He was joined by his best friend and costar Machine Gun Kelly.
